


Looking At Poetry

by Angie13



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 23:21:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12221037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angie13/pseuds/Angie13
Summary: Steve pays attention to things.  Then he draws them.  (Post The Avengers but no spoilers at all)





	Looking At Poetry

He watched her intently whenever he thought she would not notice - even knowing full well that she probably did notice because there was precious little that escaped the attention of the infamous Black Widow. Her simple, efficient movements fascinated him, every gesture an elegant but pointed line of poetry. Perhaps haiku, he thought. He knew almost nothing about the Japanese form of poetry. It was short and seemed both clear and mystical which was just as impossible as it sounded. It fell measured and deliberate on his ears when recitations came his way. Much like so many of her gestures, transparent but not.

Sometimes he thought Bucky had been right all those years ago. He thought too much. He got caught in his own head and worked against himself when it came to anything outside of a cause or a battle or a moment of life-stopping tension.

Which made his situation all too strange and funny because she herself was a life-stopping force all on her own. Literally and figuratively as he watched her stride through her days with no echo of doubt or hesitation. Like deliberate poetry. Like a haiku which he still did not know or understand but felt low and sure and right. Gut instinct. Cliche but true.

Gut. Heart. Whichever ruled him in those moments.

No, not heart. He could never let that come into her poetry. She had no patience, no time, no understanding of the place a heart could have in her story. She said as much with every slipped detail or almost-honest crooked smile.

It was this knowledge, nearly as sure as how well he knew his own body and his capabilities, that kept him quiet and kept him watching her. It kept his sketches silent and reproachful in his notebook as if they were awkward, slightly dirty secrets. But how could he hope to explain the need to draw her without revealing the breadth and depth and length of his watching? How could he even try to justify it to her when he could barely do so to himself? 

After a while, he realized that she noticed but it was too late at that point; he could no more stop watching her move through life than he could stop breathing. Knowing she knew almost felt freeing in a way. It meant he could relax and release the tension that rode his shoulders when he feared she might see. Instead, he shifted his attention to what he would say if the others noticed. 

I watch all of you. I am your leader. I have to know your strengths and weaknesses. I have to know what you are about to do almost as soon as you know. I have to watch you all so I can have your back. I am with you.

That would be his answer if the others mentioned his attention. Logical, firm, honest, and utterly respectable.

They never asked. No one asked.

Until one night, quite suddenly, she appeared behind him as he sat on one of the numerous balconies of the tower, one of his tattered, secret sketchpads open and resting on his lap. A bitten pencil rested in his hand, loose atop the half begun sketch. He nearly dropped it when she made a faint sound low in the back of her throat but he refused to startle. Instead, he turned his head slightly and gave her a nod. Even as he showed nothing but composure, he brought a hand over the sketchpad and its incriminating evidence.

“Star-gazing, Rogers?”

Her tone resonated with such perfect neutrality that he lifted an eyebrow and shook his head without thinking. When he spotted the tiny quirk of her lips, he laughed. Figures. He shrugged and moved the sketchpad off to his other side, setting it on the bench and tucking his pencil in the spiral binding. “Yeah, star-gazing, sure.” 

He tipped his head back and squinted at the sky. Nothing presented itself to the naked eye, the clouds and smog thickly covering the moon and stars. The only hint of light came from the city itself, the glare of halogen and neon and LED reflecting off the screen of clouds. “I’m from Queens, Nat,” he finally continued. Dropping his head again to look at her straight on, he offered a grin of his own. “I didn’t see stars until I was at Fort Lehigh, you know.”

“Shame.” With her usual feline grace, she stepped across the balcony to join him on the bench. She braced her arms behind and tilted herself back until she also could look skywards. 

Whether she was commenting on his childhood lack of stars or the current situation, her mild expression made it impossible to guess so he said nothing and settled into a mirror image of her pose. Silence fell between them. To his relief, it felt natural and normal. If his sketchbook caught her attention at all, she said nothing about it. He glanced out the corner of his eye at her profile. Her eyes half-closed, head tipped back, blood red curls tumbling back from her porcelain perfect face. His fingers itched to pick up his pad again and draw. He bit his bottom lip and focused his attention forward once more. 

“How can you draw when there isn’t anything to see, Steve?”

He started at her question and turned without thinking to stare at her. “What?”

“It’s dark up here.” She remained in the same position, offering up her profile for his wide eyed gaze. A faint smile barely touched her lips and curved the corners. “How can you see to draw?”

“I…” He shrugged. “I haven’t always had things to look at when I want to draw. Couldn’t exactly get models or still lifes out on the front. Light was always hit or miss, too. Learned to draw by touch sometimes.” He shifted forward to lace his fingers together and rest his elbows on his spread knees. Looking down at his hands, he considered her question further. “So I draw what I see in my head… Or what I would like to see, I guess.”

“Are they different things?”

“Sometimes.”

She weighed his answer in silence for long moments and he finally raised his eyes to look out over the city again. The air held the promise of more rain. He wondered if it would deliver that night or in the morning. He reckoned the city could use it, whenever it came. He vaguely remembered something on the news about water tables. Besides that, though, he liked the city in the rain. Seen through the slanting drops, everything became slightly unreal and more than a little dream-like. He remembered a story, a fairy tale. His mother read it to him during one of his many stretches of sickness when he was young, stuck in bed and fretful and, ingrate that small children always were, fighting her at every suggestion or order. The Little Mermaid. 

The city seen through rain reminded him tangentially of that story and he smiled a bit. It felt good to remember his mother without sharp pangs of sadness and loneliness. He liked to think that she would be proud of the man he had become. He did not think of how the story ended; he knew his mother softened it for him, anyway, though it still ended on a melancholy note. The poor little mermaid still died for love but it was a noble sacrifice with immediate reward. The way her words had changed slightly as she told of the moments after the knife arched, unused, into the ocean spoke of immediate creation, on the spot improvisation. On the other hand, at no point had she shied away from the sacrifices made by the mermaid princess to earn her legs - the pain of knives to feet, the agony of silence. He loved his mother all the more for that. She understood that he knew pain from an early age - his weak lungs, his spent muscles, the slight curve of his spine - and never tried to mask the reality of physical discomfort. She respected whatever small strength he had possessed and showed him how best to use it by her own daily bravery.

He read the story again, years later, when he found a tattered and battered collection of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales at one of the desolate outposts on the Eastern Front. At the time, he wondered how fairy tales had a place among soldiers but then, after a moment, he realized that soldiers survived on fairy tales. After all, wasn’t he Captain America? The ultimate American fairy tale?

He much preferred his mother’s ending. Call it good old fashioned American “have it now” syndrome. 

Someone mentioned that Disney had done a version of the story to him and he had found the movie on the Tower’s extensive media library. He knew instinctively the story would end even more differently than his mother’s story but he was curious. The fact that the heroine sported flaming red hair had no influence whatsoever in his interest, he told himself. Besides, that redhead appeared to smile far more and clearly, so very clearly, believed that love was not something just for children. Perhaps she was a sonnet rather than a haiku but, deep in his wandering mind, he knew that he would continue to prefer the unknowable, confusing, teasing haiku that danced just out of his reach.

“What do you see now?”

Her voice should not have startled him; it was low as always but more careful than usual. Nonetheless, he jumped minutely and saw her flash of amused grin out of the corner of his eye before she could suppress it. “Disney,” he answered and it was correct enough and surprising enough that he earned an honest look of interest when she twisted to look at him.

“Disney.” Her repetition of the famous name sounded caught between amusement and confusion. 

He could not help but think the mixture sounded adorable and immediately wanted to laugh at himself for applying such a word to her. Instead, he shrugged. “Did you know that I have to catch up on something like forty plus movies by them? And that isn’t even counting the stuff they did with other companies like Pixar.” He shook his head in mock sadness, trying his best to project a sense of being completely overwhelmed.

His reward was her laughter and the sound washed over him like a benediction. He lifted his head, straightened, and grinned at Natasha. Her face lit with humor, the warmth of her giggles, it changed her to someone entirely different and yet the same. Girlish and younger and unguarded. He could not resist letting it sink into his brain and his ears and his heart. It was such a good sound and, when she laughed, she presented him with something new to watch and remember. Even more importantly, she invited him to watch her in those moments with her body language. His fingers itched to draw the new line of her throat, the exposed vulnerability as she tipped her head back in her released humor. In that instant, the haiku had an answer and made sense and it was just as simple as living and breathing. It was just as beautiful as she was.

When her hand settled on his and she squeezed, he fought back a shiver. He realized his other hand had shifted to rest on his sketchpad and he froze, caught in the act of would-be wanton creation. Swallowing down any urge to apologize, he arched an eyebrow at her in question. 

She answered with a smile, gentle and indulgent. Then she reached across him before he could stop her and snatched up his sketchpad. He felt his face flush in the split second the pad was in her hands - all of his secret sketches, the simple drawings tracing out the curve of her smile and the line of her neck and the tilt of her eyebrow and the angle of her collarbone, all of them too revealing in their tender attention to allow their relationship to continue without complications. He wanted to grab for the sketchpad and save them both.

He sat, frozen.

Then the pad was in his hands, unopened and undisturbed, and her lips ghosted a kiss high over his cheekbone. “I’ll watch them with you,” she whispered. “Just name the time and place, Rogers.” She straightened, grinned widely, and stood. Fussily, she brushed off her jeans before giving him a warm nod. “I’m going back inside,” she continued, louder but still filled with a dark warmth that surrounded him. “Don’t get rained on out here. Super soldier or not, all men are babies when they get sick.”

A wink then and she disappeared back inside, leaving him with his thoughts and his sketchpad. What was he seeing, she had asked. He smiled as he pulled the pencil from the wire binding on the sketchpad and opened to a clean page. He saw her and that laugh and a couch with blankets and pillows and popcorn and a television playing Disney. He saw a haiku becoming understandable for the moment where all forms of art met and expanded. 

Chuckling under his breath, Steve Rogers bent his head over the fresh page and began again. Maybe, this time, he would have a chance to see his art come to life. If it did, she would notice him watching and remembering and, for some reason, he felt perfectly okay with that idea at this moment.


End file.
